John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

THAT is the VERY reason that he got his ass "bbq'ed" over on the Asylum. Saying one thing and doing another is what made him the "poster boy" for hypocrisy on this subject. Sean
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Because Dunlavy makes another speaker wire does NOT change his position.

It means he has another design with different properties that was designed to insure that "loudspeaker cables possess all the electrical properties required to ensure that no audible degradation of complex musical waveforms and transients can occur between the output terminals of a power-amp, and the input terminals of a loudspeaker." (from his website).

He doesn't claim he can hear the difference or than any one else would. Nor does he claim it is SONICALLY better than zip cord...he just claims that it has different properties.

And what is wrong with building a product that someone might by. He is making NO claims that it is sonically better than anything else, just that it has been designed with engineering principles he believes in. Tell me one other speaker cable company that does this. They ALL claim ther's sounds better.

I would suspect that, given his position on speaker cables, he sells little of it

So You Want To Argue.
Dunlavy's argument is that people can not distinguish between cables better than
chance IN BLIND TESTS. His support is the result of many tests conducted at his
facilities.

Right, and this is the problem - YOU CAN NOT GENERALIZE from one test situation and then declare that "A" is the truth based upon these results. This is what John *tends* to imply by his posts and writings - when questioned closely he either avoids the issue(s) or has to agree.

If you want to argue against Dunlavy, prove that people can sucsesfuly
distinguish between cables IN A BLIND TEST, or that his sample was not
statisticaly strong enough to make the generalization.

I do not have to do EITHER to question his CONCLUSIONS. It is sufficient to say that his test methodology is flawed and so the results that stem from it are equally flawed. They are statistically valid, but this comes from FLAWED tests. PERIOD.

Mentioning that you can discern differences under other circumstances is
TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. That is what he claims is the placebo effect which he is
so frustrated by.

I don't want to slam JD or his products, but let me say again that the LIMITING FACTORs in such tests are A) the listener's hearing ability, B) the system. I would suggest that at least in the tests published so far that item (B) is extremely questionable. Let me add that (C) the source material is also a limiting factor. NO DIFFERENCES CAN BE HEARD if any ONE or ALL of the limits are reached.

And even if under his circumstances YOU can, that does not refute the claim, you
would also need a reasonably statisticaly valid sample of people to perform the
same way.

Statistics are only as good as the TEST that underlies the statistics. There's little doubt that one can design tests that will give the appearance of being statistically valid for almost any result.

Think about the problem more fully.

_-_-bear (http://bearlabsUSA.com)

Most cable manufacturers are not wire manufacturers at all. It requires a significant capital investment to set up and operate a wire factory. The barrier for YOU to become a wire manufacturer is mostly the need to run the damn thing 24 hrs a day to make a profit and cover your overheads! So, unless you can sell MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of feet of wire, you're not going to be in any sort of wire business. MANY of the domestic wire operations have folded in the last several decades because it's tough to sell that much wire.

So, it is necessary for audio cable manufacturers to sub contract out their needs to one or more existing factories - their runs are insignificant compared to a typical industrial order - THUS, the prices are higher.

I have my pure Silver stranded wire drawn, stranded, and jacketed with PTFE ("teflon") for me by a small specialty manufacturer, I assemble it into what becomes Silver Lightning Interconnects. It is very expensive per foot because of the small quantities involved. By the time I'm done with the labor involved in the assembly and add in the costs of overhead and the materials, believe me there isn't a ton of profit. You can't look only at the cost of materials when you think about these cables.

I agree, some are junk, snake oil, and WAY overpriced. But not all.

Bear is up to his usual "debating" tactics. If decades+ of established acoustics methodology and all the evidence (from scientifically valid testing) goes against you, then just claim that the testers don't have a system with sufficient resolution. Could you give us an example of a system that you feel does have sufficient resolution?

BTW, this is not to say that people don't get more enjoyment from their system from various cables even without any audible difference. I use Nordost from my DAC to amp just because I like knowing that it's extremely low capacitance, and almost bought Straightwire Rhapsody speaker cables just because they look great! In neither case did I hear a difference from the previous cable, but maybe my system just doesn't have enough resolution, eh?

Cheers,
JHunter